The new campaign has been organised by 40 women's groups and individuals, including US-based Women, Action and the Media (WAM) and the Everyday Sexism project, a UK-based Twitter feed that encourages women to share incidences of perceived sexism.

In an open letter to the social media giant, the groups demand "swift, comprehensive and effective action addressing the representation of rape and domestic violence on Facebook" and say they are also asking Facebook users to contact companies whose adverts appear around the offending content.

Sky, American Express and Dove beauty products are among the brands affected.

The letter also lists examples of material that the group feels is unacceptable.

They include Facebook groups with titles such as "This is why Indian girls get raped" and individual uploads of graphic photographs showing abused women.

One image of a woman lying at the foot of a flight of stairs is captioned "Next time, don't get pregnant".

'Target people's interests'

Dove, a brand owned by Unilever, said it was "most upset" by the images, but both the brand and Facebook said the examples given had since been removed from the site.

"Dove takes this issue very seriously and does not condone any activity that intentionally insults any audience," said global communications director Stacie Bright.

I don't think you can use the smokescreen of free speech when you take down other images which are often of women's bodiesLaura Bates, Founder, Everyday Sexism

"We are working to refine our targeting terms in case any further pages like these are created. Facebook advertising targets people's interests, not pages, and we do not select the pages our adverts appear on."

Both Ms Bright and a spokesperson for Facebook told the BBC that the examples mentioned in the letter had now been removed from the site.

"There is no place on Facebook for hate speech or content that is threatening, or incites violence, and we will not tolerate material deemed to be genuinely or directly harmful," said Facebook in a statement.

"We try to react quickly to remove reported language or images that violate our terms and we try to make it very easy for people to report questionable content using links located throughout the site."

The company added, however, that not all material that some users might consider to be "vulgar and distasteful" actually violated its policies.

Sheer frustration

Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism project, told the BBC the campaign had been born out of "sheer frustration" from a large number women who had tried to complain about the material and had then contacted her.

So, is Facebook growing up, aware at last that it is a media company and has to take responsibility for the content created by its billion or so users?